


sunflower

by okayvaldez



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:34:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25344031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayvaldez/pseuds/okayvaldez
Summary: travis had never gotten caught before. but maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that he got caught. because he got to meet katie.
Relationships: Katie Gardner & Travis Stoll, Katie Gardner/Travis Stoll
Kudos: 43





	sunflower

**Author's Note:**

> hi this is for the TRATTIDIES gc on twitter, ilysm. yall are amazing and i appreciate you !! there aren't enough tratie fan fics out there so i did my best! hope yall enjoy :)

When Travis had walked into his local store planning to steal a cellphone, he hadn’t expected to find himself, two weeks later, standing in front of a judge. In all honesty, he hadn’t expected to be caught at all. Travis knew he wasn’t good at most things, but he knew he was good at stealing things. That’s why when he walked out of the store, thinking he was in the clear and saw two police officers holding handcuffs he knew he had fucked up. 

He still didn’t know how he had been caught. He had been slick and made sure that no one was watching him when he made the grab for the cellphone. He was sure no one had seen him. Now, as he waited for the judge to tell him his punishment, he wasn’t so sure. 

“Travis Stoll” the judge spoke, and Travis snapped himself back into reality. “Since you’re still a minor it would be premature of me to throw you in a prison cell. Especially considering this is a small offense and it would be your first offense.”

Travis kept a straight face but on the inside, he was laughing at the fact that this man thought this was his first offense. His first offense were he got caught, yeah, but definitely not his first. 

“Instead I’m going to sentence you to sixty hours of community service at a local plant nursery run by the Gardner family. You’ll be working there until your service is up. If you finish these hours correctly and without problems, this occurrence will not make it onto your permanent record. Do you understand young man?”

He wanted to make a snappy remark, tell this judge to stick it where the sun doesn't shine, and walk out of the courtroom with his middle finger in the air. But then he thought of Connor and how disappointed he would be and how disappointed he already was at the fact that he had gotten caught. So he shut his mouth, and gave the judge a small nod, “Yes sir.”

He couldn’t believe he got caught. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

The week after his sentencing he found himself standing outside of the Gardner plant nursery. The air around the shop smelled strongly of some kind of flower that Travis couldn’t place. There were plants everywhere he looked, and he wasn't even inside yet. 

He knew he was going to hate this. He wasn’t exactly the gardening type, more the ‘oh hey let's shoplift this random candy bar’ type. He wanted to turn around and never come back to this flower palace. 

But the night before Connor had practically threatened that if he didn’t finish his hours he would have hell to pay. Now Connor isn’t exactly responsible either, he pulls as many tricks as Travis does. But Connor has never gotten caught, and he knows that if Travis doesn’t do as the judge asks then they won’t be able to pull any more pranks together. 

So Travis takes a deep breath and forces himself to walk into the store. The first thing he notices is the plants. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, he isn't sure. They’re everywhere. Most of them are some kind of green but others have all kinds of vibrant colors. He would never admit it out loud, but it was really a beautiful sight. 

The next thing he moves his attention to is the man standing behind the counter in the back of the room. He’s tall, and his skin is dark, he has lines around his eyes, the kind that form because of too much smiling. Just as Travis is about to say something the man looks up from whatever he was working on and gives him a smile. 

“You must be Travis” he makes his way around the counter to Travis and extends his hand for him to shake. Travis takes his hand and is surprised by how firm a handshake this man has. “It’s a pleasure to have you here Travis,” the man says, still smiling. 

Travis tries to give him a small smile back and nods his head, “And you’re Mr.Gardner?”

The man nods his head and starts walking into a room behind the counter, Travis assumes he has to follow so he does. “I know this probably wasn’t the community service you were expecting but we need a lot of help around here. So we’re really grateful you’re here.” He continues leading him around the back rooms of the shop until they make it to one giant room with even more plants, a lot of the small and just starting to grow. Travis assumes this is probably where they keep most of the plants and do most of the work. Sixty hours, he thinks to himself. Sixty hours in here. 

Mr.Gardner stops and turns to Travis, “I want you to meet my daughter. She’s kind of my second in command and you’re going to be working with her a lot during your time here.” He turns away from him and calls out, “Katie come here!”

A few seconds later, from behind one of the plant beds, emerges a girl that seems around Travis’s age. She walks over and stands next to her dad. The first thing she notices is the height difference. Travis is pretty tall so it makes sense but she’s small, maybe just reaching his shoulders. Her skin is lighter than her dad's but definitely darker than Travis’. Her hair is tied into a bun on top of her head. Her face is slightly covered with dirt from working but he can see she has freckles. And her eyes are a mix of brown and green, the kind of eyes that are always changing colors. He can’t help but think she’s really pretty. 

But when she sees him her beautiful face looks shocked and then quickly curls into a disapproving look. 

“Katie, this is Travis Stoll. You’re going to be helping him get the hang of how things work around here.” Mr. Gardener says to her.

Travis gives her a small smirk, even though it’s obvious this girl doesn’t like him one bit and stretches out a hand for her to shake. She looks at his hand, back at him, and then scoffs and walks away. 

Mr.Gardner gives him a sympathetic look, “Sorry about that. She’s pretty used to working alone so she isn’t exactly thrilled that you’re here.”

He shrugs, “I get it. Don’t worry.”

As Mr.Gardner starts telling him about everything he’s going to have to do while working here, Travis thinks about Katie and how she had looked at him. He knew how he was going to enjoy his time here. He was going to do what he’s actually good at doing. 

Annoy Katie Gardner. 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One week later he’s standing behind the counter wearing a ridiculous green apron. He had completed eight hours of his sixty already. He’s only been there for half an hour and he already had the urge to hop over the counter and make a run for it. Before he could though Mr.Gardner came into the room and told him to go into the back and start planting some of the new seeds they had received. 

Travis was relieved to have something to do other than stand at a desk and talk to customers. But when he had the seeds in his hands and was standing in front of the fresh dirt, he realized he had no idea how to do this. Was there a right and wrong way to plant seeds? 

He dug a little hole in the dirt and dumped a few seeds from the packet into the hole. He smiled to himself, satisfied with his half-ass work. 

“You’re doing that wrong,” said a voice from behind him. 

Travis let out a small scream and jumped away from the voice, turning around to see who was speaking. Katie was standing there with her hands crossed over her chest and her signature disapproving look on her face. But there was a small mischievous smile on her face as if she was proud of scaring him. Travis put his hand over his heart, “Jesus woman, you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

She rolled her eyes and moved him out of the way. She undug the seeds from the dirt and made another hole next to it. As she worked, Travis watched her. Everything she did, she did with such ease, as if all of this came naturally to her. He hadn’t realized he was staring until she finished her work and turned to him.

“Do you get it now?” she asked him, raising her eyebrows curiously at him.

Travis smirked at her and tried copying the actions she had done before. When he finished he turned to her and said, “Ta-da!”

She scoffed, “You forgot to water it before and after putting the seeds.”

He didn’t drop his annoying smirk, “Well Gardner, how about you do it for me instead and I’ll just sit and watch you work?”

She seemed like she had something to say but instead, she let out a small huff and walked a few feet away to work on a different plant bed, effectively ignoring him.

Travis was slightly shocked that she didn’t give him some snarky remark. He went back to planting seeds, using the method Katie had shown him.

They worked quietly next to each other for a few minutes. After a little while, Katie got up and walked over to a speaker that Travis hadn’t noticed before and turned it on. The song Sunflower by Rex Orange County started to play. Weirdly enough, he knew the song. Katie went back to working on the plants and after a while, he could hear her singing the words under her breath. She didn’t have the most beautiful voice, but it was still one of the nicest sounds he had ever heard. 

The next two hours went just like that, both of them working in their own space. Gradually both of them gained the confidence to sing along to the songs out loud. They even went so far as to bust a few moves. It was like a silent agreement that neither would judge the other, no matter how bad they sang or danced. 

Suddenly the music stopped and both of them looked over to the speaker. Mr.Gardner was standing there with a curious look on his face. “Looks like you two did a good amount of work.”

Travis looked at Katie and gave her a big smile. She smiled back at him and then looked at her hands like she was trying to hide her smile. She was a lot prettier when she smiled, Travis thought. 

“Well Travis, you’re good to go for today. We’ll see you next week on Monday.” Mr.Gardner smiled at him and walked away, knowing that Travis would let himself out. Travis stood up and brushed his dirty hands on his apron. 

He walked over to the door to leave, but before he did he turned around and looked at Katie who had gone back to work. 

“See you later, Gardner,” he said to her. 

She looked up, and playfully rolled her eyes, “Bye Stoll.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the next two weeks, he spent a lot more time with Katie. They worked together of course, but it seemed like even when they didn’t need to be working together they were. But they weren’t friends, Travis always reminded himself. Their relationship was weird, they were co-workers that occasionally played pranks at each other and insulted each other at every opportunity they got. Travis had pranked Katie first, by putting her favorite gardening gloves in the wrong wash pile and they came out pink. He hadn’t expected her to retaliate, pranks were more his thing than hers. But the next day when Travis walked into saran wrap taped to the door, he knew who was responsible. An unspoken war had started between the two of them, and Katie’s pranks got better and less predictable as they went on. Almost as if she was learning from him. 

Even Mr.Gardner seemed confused by the two of them. Considering one second they were relentlessly insulting each other and the next they were having a dance party while rearranging plants in the shop. 

Now, the two of them were silently seated next to each other in the back of the store eating their lunch.

“So,” Katie spoke, “You’ve completed half of your hours right? By the end of today, you’ll be halfway done.”

Travis thought about it for a second, and she was right. Three weeks in and only three weeks left to go. “I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right.”

“Finally I won’t have to see your ugly face every day.” she teased him. 

He lightly punched her shoulder, “And I won’t have to put up with your annoying instructions every day. You really are the world's biggest perfectionist aren’t you?”

She let out a laugh and went back to eating her sandwich. Travis had grown to really love Katie’s laugh, and it was pretty easy to make her laugh.

“Oh c'mon Gardner, you’re not going to miss me? Not even a little?” he asked her, bumping his shoulder with hers. 

She rolled her eyes at him but then got serious all of a sudden, looking at him with a straight face. Their relationship was never serious, either they were teasing each other in private or insulting each other in front of others. 

“Yeah I am going to miss you Travis,” she whispered, the floor suddenly becoming very interesting for her to look at. 

He wasn’t sure what to say to her. In his weeks of being here, she had never said anything truly nice to him. He wasn’t sure how to react. All he knew is that he thought he would hate it here, and instead, he had made a sort of friend and ended up having fun. 

Before he could think it through he grabbed her hand from her lap, intertwining their fingers. She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I’m going to miss you too” he smiled at her. A genuine smile, not his mischievous smirk which he usually saved for her.

They looked at each other for what felt like minutes and the air in the room seemed to be electrified. Is that what it feels like to have a moment, Travis thought to himself. 

Before he could think about it anymore, she looked away from him and jumped off the counter they were sitting on. “Well, we don’t have to think about it just yet. You’ve still got three weeks left to go and you still have no idea how to plant a flower so we have our work cut out for us.”

He hopped off the counter, standing in front of her he said, “Wow Gardner way to ruin a moment.”

She blushed a little and Travis added it to the long list in his braid of adorable things Katie Gardner had done. She rolled her eyes and started walking out of the room they were in. 

She didn’t let go of his hand. 

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Those next three weeks went by too fast and before Travis knew it, it was his last day at the shop. After their conversation, the dynamic between Katie and Travis changed. They still teased each other in front of others and even when it was just the two of them. But there were stolen moments of friendship that they shared. Holding hands during their breaks, hanging out after work, talking on the phone until sunrise. Katie had even come over to Travis’ house to meet Connor. 

On his last day, Travis walked into the shop with a pit in his stomach. He couldn’t believe he had almost completed his hours. He was relieved to stop working, he knew gardening and taking care of plants wasn’t his talent. But he dreaded how everything between him and a certain someone would change now that he wouldn’t be there every day. 

He quickly left his things under the counter of the shop and put on his green apron and started to work.

By the end of the day, he was exhausted. The work itself hadn’t been too bad, but he had spent the last few hours actively avoiding Katie. He knew what was coming. Some kind of goodbye, Travis really didn’t like goodbyes. And he was preparing himself to be disappointed. Katie would probably tell him that she wasn’t interested in seeing him after today. They would cease to be friends once he stepped out of the shop. He was taking off his apron and cleaning his hands when Katie walked into the room.

Travis pretended she wasn’t there and kept cleaning his hands. “Why have you been ignoring me?” she asked him. Travis looked up and noticed her hands were on her hips. She stood like that when she was mad. 

“I haven’t been ignoring you,” he told her as he dried his hands on his pants and walked past her to the main counter of the shop. He leaned against it, waiting for her to speak. 

She huffed. “Yes, you have! Every time I came into the room you were working in you would walk out. I thought” she stopped for a second, looking hurt. “I thought it would be the opposite considering it’s your last day,” she said quietly. 

Travis felt like an idiot. How had he fucked up their last day together so badly? He grabbed her hand and pulled her a little closer to him. “I’m really sorry Katie.”

She nodded her head and looked at their feet. 

He let go of her hand and crouched under the counter to grab the bag he had come in with. “I know I messed up pretty bad but I think I can make it up to you.” He took out a small box and placed it in her hands. “This is for you,” he said, a smile on his lips. 

She looked up at him with wide eyes, surprised that he was giving her anything let alone a gift. She opened the box and let out a gasp when she saw the necklace inside. The necklace had a small sunflower pendant. 

She looked up and met his eyes, “this is for me?”

He chuckled and took the box from her hands. He took out the necklace and motioned for her to turn away from him. He slowly moved her hair out of the way and attached the necklace around her neck. They were extremely close to each other and Travis felt like he was being shocked every time his fingers brushed against her skin. 

She turned back to face him, touching the charm. She looked at him skeptically, “You didn’t steal this did you?” 

He scoffed and lightly punched her shoulder, “No I didn’t steal it.” He gave her a serious smile, “I bought it for you.”

“I can’t believe you bought something for me,” she said in awe, still fiddling with the necklace. 

He shrugged, “You deserve it. I probably would have killed a lot more plants if it wasn’t for you.” That got a laugh and a small nod from her. “I don’t want this to be the end,” he said shyly, scratching the back of his neck. 

“It won’t be,” she told him, suddenly embracing him in a hug. 

Travis felt like he was on cloud nine. 

They stayed like that for a few minutes before Travis finally pulled away. “Well since this isn’t the last time, I’ll see you later Gardner. I told Connor I would be home early so we can celebrate.”

She giggled and moved away from him, “Who knows? Maybe you’ll get in trouble and end up here again”

He shook his head, “Nah don’t worry. I won’t get caught again.”

Suddenly Katie looked really tense. She stepped away from him and said, “Oh. Do you ever wonder how you got caught?”

He raised his eyebrows at her change in behavior. “I mean at the start I wondered but not anymore. Why?”

She looked back at him, a guilty look on her face. “Travis I don’t know how to say this but-”

“You-You called the cops on me?” he finished for her, his words laced with hurt. He moved away from her and the counter, making his way towards the door. 

“Travis wait! Please let me explain! I didn’t know who you were. I just did what I thought was right. I didn’t even tell the police, you know I don’t like police officers. I just told the store owner. If I had known you I wouldn’t have I’m so so sorry.” she pleaded, following him out the door. 

He turned to face her, stopping in his tracks. “Katie I just-” he thought for a moment “-just give me some time to think okay? I’ll see you later.”

And with that, he walked away. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------  
Travis hadn’t left his room in two days. Connor tried to get him to leave and to talk to Katie but Travis refused. It wasn’t that he was mad, in all honesty, it didn’t really matter who had gotten him into trouble. But for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to see Katie. But she was all he could think about. 

He knew he liked her. He wasn’t going to stupidly deny his feelings like some people did. But it hadn’t really hit him until she hugged him. And what followed after that hug had really hurt him and he wasn’t even sure if she would care to see him after all of that. He couldn’t help but think that things would be different between them if he went to see her now. 

But every minute that he spent locked in his room thinking about her, hurt him. It was around ten pm when Travis decided enough was enough. He put on some different clothes and basically ran to the Gardner’s shop. He wasn’t even sure if he would find Katie there. Usually, they would close the shop at around six. But he was holding on to the small hope that she would be there. 

He tried to catch his breath as he stood in front of the shop. He could see a small light still on in one of the rooms where they kept the plants that they were going to ship out the next day. Travis came in through the back of the shop, knowing that they usually left it unlocked. 

When he peered into the room he saw Katie hunched over a couple of plants, making sure they were ready to be shipped. Travis gave a small knock on the door and watched Katie let out a scream and jump back away from the sound.

He laughed a little bit, “I guess it was my turn to scare you wasn’t it?” When she registered that it was him she visibly relaxed and put her hand over her heart the same way he had all those weeks ago. 

“You really shouldn’t scare someone like that. Especially this late” she scolded him.

He walked closer to her so they were only a few feet away from each other. “Yeah I’m sorry about that. And the fact that I’m here so late. I wasn’t even sure you would be here.”

“Usually I’m not but when I need to think I stay and help later than usual, it calms me down” she nodded towards the plants. 

Travis took a second to get a good look at her. She looked like she hadn’t slept since the last time he saw her. Her clothes were even messier than usual. But the sunflower necklace still hung around her neck. 

He sighed and walked right up to her and grabbed her hands in his. “Look, Katie, you know I’m not the sappy type. Or even the type of guy to express his emotions. But you’re important to me. After Connor, you’re the person I’m closest to. You mean the world to me and I’m sorry if I caused you any stress.”  
“You’re not mad about me telling the store owner you were stealing?” she whispered, looking anywhere but at him. 

Travis let out a soft chuckle, “No, I’m not. You wanna know why? Because if I hadn’t gotten caught I would never have met you.”

She finally met his eyes and bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Oh so you’re happy you met me?” she teased him, nudging his foot with hers.

He rolled his eyes and let go of her hands. He placed them on her waist and pulled her closer to him. She let out a small squeal and wrapped her arms around his neck. 

“I’m very happy I met you. You’re the best and most annoying thing that’s ever happened to me Garnder.”

He moved his head down and finally connected their lips. 

And it was pretty much the greatest kiss of all time.


End file.
